The trend nowadays isn’t to remake movies as other movies. It’s to remake them as TV series. The same day it was revealed Grease is getting a prequel show, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Amazon was digging up IP that’s not even a quarter century old yet, reviving the 1997 slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer, but this time for television. (Of course, someone already tried to remake this one before, without much luck.)
The original film, which was based on a 1973 YA novel, concerns a group of teens who accidentally hit a pedestrian with their car then cover up the murder. The next year they find themselves suddenly stalked by a mysterious, hook-wielding killer, seemingly hell-bent on revenge. The movie rode the waves of the late ‘90s trend of post-modern horror, with self-aware teens often joking about the genre’s tropes and clichés. On top of creating Dawson’s Creek, Summer’s screenwriter, Kevin Williamson, also wrote the one that started them all, 1996’s Scream.
Starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, and Freddie Prinze Jr., I Know What You Did Last Summer was a massive hit, but it was one of the last of its kind. Even though the Scream sequels continued to rake in cash, its own sequel, the amusingly titled I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, did not. But given that Scream itself is getting a fivequel, maybe that brand of horror will live again.
(Via THR)